Content-aware healing

The Spot Healing Brush tool has always been useful for removing blemishes during retouching.In Photoshop Elements 9, this tool has received a new option, the Content-Awarefill option that makes it capable of a lot more than just retouching.One area where this tool shines with the new option is removing wires like thisone, they cross the areas of texture.This is otherwise really hard to remove.Let's give it a try.I'm going to make a new layer for this project by going over to the layers paneland clicking the Add New layer button.

I'll rename the new layer wire and press Enter or Return on the keyboard.I'll go up to the options bar and I'll make sure to check Sample All layersand then I want to make sure that the new Content-Aware fill option is the selected type.This option will help to blend the color, texture and tone of the pixels thatI'm going to be laying down the wire layer to cover this telephone wire.I'll start over here on the right and I want to make my brush just bigger than the wire.So I'm going to use the bracket keys on my keyboard to size the brush.

Now, I'm going to click and drag over this wire.I'm going to stop before I reach the tree, so that you can see what a goodjob it did, but as I got near the tree, it did pick up a little bit of the darker pixels.So I'm going to click on that area a couple of times and see if I can remove those.Now comes the challenge of trying to remove the wire over the texture of the tree.I'm going to make my brush a little bit smaller by pressing the Left Bracketkey a couple more times and then I'll click and drag a little way over the wireand I prefer to release my mouse as I go several times, so that I don't leave a line in the tree.

So that's not a perfect job, but it's a pretty good job.Now I'll continue across the sky and here, the wire is almost invisible after Ipassed the Spot Healing Brush over it.The brush is doing a great job of finding the best pixels to cover this wire andblending those pixels with the surrounding area.Now to remind you what this image looked like a minute ago, I'll go back over tothe layers panel and I'll make the wire layer which contains the retouchingmarks invisible for a moment by clicking the eye icon to its left.

So here is the before view and here's the after view, using the Spot HealingBrush tool with the new Content-Aware option.

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Released

11/23/2010

In Photoshop Elements 9 Essential Training, Jan Kabili highlights the key features of this comprehensive image organization and photo enhancement application. She shows how to correct and enhance photographs, and how to organize a growing collection of digital photos. The course also explains how to use photos in creative projects like photo books, calendars, and greeting cards, and how to share work online and in print. Exercise files accompany the course.